Fitness-for-service assessment for pressurized components

• Main Author: Ji, Jonathan Jia Yang
• Other Authors: Ong Lin Seng
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Industrial engineering::Quality engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/40555
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Fitness-for-Service (FFS) is a widely used assessment procedure to determine if pressurized equipment is qualified for continual service. The outcome of this assessment includes continual service, repair, or to retire the equipment. By using this assessment, a high level of safety could be achieved. There are in total 3 Levels of Assessment. Level 1 Assessment is the basic screening assessment where minimum geometric and material information of the pressurized equipment is required. The higher level of Assessment requires more data and is deemed to be more accurate and requires a lower level of safety margin. If a component does not pass the first Level, it will proceed on to the following level. FFS is based on the American Petroleum Institute (API) Recommended Practice (RP) 579. This report focuses on the assessment procedures for brittle fracture for pressurized components. A excel spreadsheet for this assessment is created based on API RP 579 to facilitate the cease of this assessment. This spreadsheet would help the user to assess the component faster by keying the respective values. The spreadsheet includes detailed step by step procedures for the brittle fracture assessment. In using the spreadsheet, the user just have to input the respective data and follow the steps according to assess the components. Three different case studies were reviewed to show the real life applications of this assessment. In all the examples, the step by step procedures were provided. In using the spreadsheet as compared to the manual calculation of the assessment while many references to the API RP 579 have to be made, the user could assess the equipment much faster and preventing any calculation error to be made.